Читать книгу The Secret Chart; or, Treasure Hunting in Hayti онлайн

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“In a few weeks it became evident that the rascally strangers could slaughter and boucan more beeves in a day than the entire Spanish community could in three. Boucanning, by the way, was a peculiar process of curing flesh by jerking, salting, and drying in the sunshine, the term being derived from an aboriginal word applied by the cannibal Caribbes to the curing of human flesh. Such was the skill of the intruders in converting the bulls into a superior, merchantable product by means of the boucan that the Spanish derisively applied the native word to them.

“As Tortuga lay directly in the path of European vessels bound for Mexican ports, the fifteen Frenchmen immediately built up a thriving business in boucanned beef. Doubloons, pieces-of-eight, and moidores became to them as shells or seabeans to the Spanish fishermen. Word went back apace to St. Christopher, throwing that island into such an uproar that the craze to go a-boucanning carried its most unruly seamen to the Tortoise.

“Frenchmen came down upon the islet like a swarm of mosquitoes, and overran it before the simple Spanish folks could recover from their astonishment. Ominous growlings were heard among the original settlers, but for such trivial matters as round Spanish oaths the intruders cared never a whit. Just before dawn, December 1, 1633, the Spanish islanders met at the plaza of their little town, and descended headlong upon the intruders at the boucanning beaches. Then began a massacre, during which the intruders were cut down wherever found.